


Circumradius

by exbex



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 04:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/pseuds/exbex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Turnbull and Vecchio know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but Fraser and Kowalski can't let things be that simple, now can they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circumradius

**Author's Note:**

  * For [podfic_lover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/podfic_lover/gifts).



> Special thanks to my beta, Tatau.

Turnbull pondered his new painting for some minutes. It was a simple landscape of a snowy hillside, something Ray would surely refer to as terribly Canadian and also reminiscent of Le Paysage de Neige. Turnbull had centered a young boy in the painting, but the picture seemed incomplete.  
Beside him, Diefenbaker yipped. “Perhaps you’re right”, Turnbull answered, not yet turning away from the canvas.  
He heard a muffled groan coming from the kitchen and he rubbed a hand across his forehead before turning to address Dief directly. “Two more days of this, and I’m certain that I will be crushing his painkillers and hiding them in his food.” He paused. “Or forcing them down his throat.”  
Dief wagged his tail in agreement.   
When Turnbull went into the kitchen he wordlessly drew a glassful of water and set it, along with two painkillers, in front of Fraser, whose face was contorted in pain. Fraser gave him a grateful look and grasped the pills in his good hand before swallowing them quickly  
**  
Vecchio, in his dark slacks and dark turtleneck, with his hands clasped in front of him, looked like a supervillain. The only thing that was missing was an evil smirk. An evil smirk and maybe a mustache that could be twirled. Ray gripped the railings and grimaced in pain. He glared at Vecchio. “I’m going to kill you.”  
Vecchio’s impassive expression remained. “Whatever gets you to end of this line here, Kowalski. I just might be nice and stand here for the fourteen hours that it’ll take for you to beat me to death.”  
Ray almost managed a laugh.  
**  
Turnbull was helping him into pajamas, moving his left arm with extreme care. Fraser wondered, not for the first time, why he was doing this. He could not honestly say that he would have done the same for Turnbull if he found himself in a similar predicament. It was another layer of shame added to the pile, on top of how things had ended with Ray, his irritation at feeling and showing weakness, and the increasing sense of futility.  
Fraser wondered when duty had swallowed him whole and burned away any sight of why it was all so important.  
He found himself wanting to ask Turnbull a thousand questions, but the effects of the pain pills took over and was lost in sleep within minutes.  
**  
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Ray hated the hospital bed, hated the feeling of being completely unsettled, of wanting to just get up and run like hell away from it on legs that weren’t yet strong enough to carry him. Vecchio was turned away from him, looking out the window at the streets below, hands clasped behind him this time.  
“Not a damn thing,” Vecchio replied as he finally turned to look at Ray.  
Ray didn’t actually want Vecchio to leave, but of course he didn’t know how to say it (even now, now that he should know better), so he looked for reasons to stall him, ways to fill up the silence. “Why are you doing this anyway?”  
“It’s what I do,” Vecchio replied wryly. “And I’ve spent enough time right there where you are to know how it is.” He paused, taking one last glance out the window. “You should really get some sleep.”  
**  
Turnbull pondered his painting for a few more moments before he finally passed his brush over the figure of the young boy. There was still something missing from the painting, but he cleaned his paintbrushes and sat down at the computer, opening the messenger service and waiting.  
You there, Gorgeous? Came the words and the bell sound that accompanied them.  
Turnbull smiled. I’m here, he typed.  
How’s he doing?  
Stubborn as ever, Turnbull replied. How’s your’s?  
Not nearly as bad, but still depressed. I’m sure I still got off easy, though.  
I would argue with you, but I’m too tired to begin that one, Turnbull typed with a smirk.  
Yeah, it’s late here too.  
Turnbull paused before typing his next reply. I miss you.  
I miss you too. Soon, though. I’m not in this for just the altruistic reasons, you know.  
Turnbull grinned. I must confess, neither am I.  
Yes you are; I’m a total pity case, you just don’t know it yet.  
Well, I look forward to finding out, at any rate, Turnbull typed. He paused, then typed a final message. Sleep well.  
You too. Good night.  
The screen showed that Ray had signed off, but Turnbull sat for several more moments before logging off and heading to bed.  
**  
“So who owns this cabin that you’re spiriting me off to and how did you convince them to let us use it for two weeks?” Ray rested his head against the seat, letting it lazily roll to the side to look at Vecchio and wait for an answer.  
“Good friend of mine,” Vecchio answered without taking his eyes off the road.  
“A legal friend?” Ray asked, and immediately wondered at the appropriateness of his question. Just because Vecchio had apparently rocked an undercover gig well enough to come out of it without so much as a scratch (visibly anyway), didn’t mean that he’d appreciate Ray’s smart-ass questions, particularly since Vecchio had, for whatever mysterious reason, appointed himself as Ray’s caretaker.  
Vecchio just threw him a smirk. “Squeaky clean.”  
**  
“This is your father’s cabin?”   
It was a good sign, Turnbull decided, that Fraser had come out of his fog of depression and painkillers long enough to notice where he’d been living for the past weeks.  
“Yes. He left it to me in his will.” Turnbull was turned away from Fraser, staring once again at the painting that was going to drive him mad. He’d painted in a figure of a man, only to paint over it. He cleared his throat. “You seem to be doing much better.” He turned to address Fraser, who was standing behind him, as much at parade rest as he could manage with his bad shoulder.  
“Yes,” Fraser hesitated, using his good arm to raise his thumb and rub at an eyebrow. “I want to thank you, for doing so much without obligation.”  
“It’s…not a problem.” Turnbull hesitated. “I’m expecting some guests, tomorrow morning. There’ll be here at least through the weekend. My…partner and a friend of his.”  
Fraser blinked, processing. “Oh. I won’t…be in the way?”  
“No, no of course not,” Turnbull reassured.  
**  
Ray let out a deep sigh as lay back on the suspiciously comfortable hotel room bed. He watched as Vecchio stretched out in the bed next to him. “Look, Vecchio. I uh…I appreciate all you’re doing.” He wanted to add something about how Vecchio didn’t have to do this, even ask him why he bothered, but the fact was that he was stubborn, not stupid, and he was damn lucky to have anyone who was willing to take care of him like this.  
“Good,” Vecchio replied without looking up from his book. Ray couldn’t help but laugh at that.  
**  
Ray wasn’t laughing the next morning when he walked into the cabin behind Vecchio and caught a of glimpse of Vecchio’s “friends.” The sight of Turnbull was just puzzling, but to see Fraser was like a shot.  
Things just got hinkier from then on. Both Vecchio and Turnbull broke into delighted grins, and then hugged, which Ray could not have possibly anticipated, not in a thousand years. The kiss that followed made Ray engage all of his detective skills, and even then all he could figure was that they’d all fallen into some kind of twilight zone situation.  
**  
“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, Ren. And I’ve done some incredibly crazy shit.”  
Turnbull could tell that Ray was fighting an incredible urge to turn around. He reached for Ray’s hand and intertwined their fingers, gently tugging him down the path, in the direction of the woods. “Are you referring to becoming involved with me or to manipulating these two into speaking to one another?”  
Ray’s smile was almost enough to make him light-headed. “The latter, Gorgeous. You’re probably the most sane thing I’ve ever had in my life.”  
Turnbull raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like cause for concern.”  
**  
Fraser wondered if the sudden increasing intensity in his shoulder pain was at least partly psychosomatic. He was carefully avoiding Ray’s eyes, focusing on his frame, (Ray had always been wiry, but he now seemed to be almost dangerously thin), and the wisps of now greying hair at his temples (it suited him, mixing well with the blond strands and Ray’s skin and eye-color).  
“So…Vecchio and Turnbull. Can’t say I ever would have seen that one coming.”  
Fraser cleared his throat. “I doubt Nostradamus could have accurately predicted such an anomaly.” He forced himself to meet Ray’s eyes, and to remain fixed as their expression went from mirthful to (and here, again, a reminder that Ray could be an incredible enigma) to something indefinable, when Fraser had expected anger, or, worse, disappointment.  
“I guess we should address that giant elephant here, huh Frase?”  
“Yes, Ray, I suppose we should.” Fraser looked down at the floor.  
“So I guess, since obviously those two manipulative bastards planned this under our noses, we should figure out if we’re going to ‘cuss ‘em out or thank them.”  
When Fraser looked at Ray again, he was completely still (unusual), and he had a steady gaze trained on Fraser (not so unusual). Fraser inhaled sharply. “I’m not sure what you expect me to say, Ray.”  
“Right, because admitting you were wrong is “unamenable” or something like that, right?” Ray continued without waiting for a response. “Cuz I gotta tell ya, Frase,” and here he gestured to his legs and Fraser’s arm, “obviously your plan to ‘keep me safe’ hasn’t quite worked out, now has it? Because apparently, if you’re a cop, or, you know, live in Chicago, or even the ass-end of nowhere, you can still get hurt, in wildly bizarre ways, thousands of miles away from the guy you used to end up in all those wildly bizarre situations with, while he’s getting hurt in completely different and unrelated ways, and you can’t even be there with him, where you belong.”  
The bitterness in Ray’s voice stung, and Fraser looked away for a moment before replying, trying to keep his voice even. “You were almost killed by a blizzard Ray, on an ill-planned, impetuous quest (and he couldn’t keep his own bitterness out of his voice), and it would have been irresponsible…”  
“Dammit, Fraser!” Ray interrupted forcefully, his hands twitching as if he wished to stand up and pace the floor. “Why can’t you just admit it?”  
Fraser wanted to ask what Ray expected him to admit, but he knew it would be petty. His hands were suddenly shaking, and he clenched them. “We do what we must in order to survive Ray.” He knew he didn’t need to finish, didn’t need to say what he was thinking: I wouldn’t have been able to survive it if something had happened to you.  
Nine minutes passed before either of them spoke again; Fraser could count them by the ticking of the clock somewhere in the background.   
“Okay, so, maybe instead of going all half-cocked off on some quest, we go back to you endangering our lives in wildly bizarre ways.”  
It took Fraser a few moments to decipher that the shaking in his chest was laughter, even though he could feel tears beginning to prickle in his eyes. He blinked them back. “I…would be willing to try that, I think.”  
Ray sighed and smiled wryly. He patted a place on the sofa next to him, gesturing for Fraser to leave his armchair. “Get over here, Freak.”  
Fraser joined Ray on the sofa, and let him sling a possessive but careful arm around him. They settled into a comfortable silence, broken a few minutes later by Ray’s bemused observation. “Besides, if Turnbull and Vecchio can do it, should be a cake walk.”  
**  
Turnbull opened his eyes, unable to piece together the dream that had he’d been wakened from. He listened to the clock chime, changing to the next hour, and slid out from under Ray’s arm. He padded into the tiny nook that functioned as his studio and stared again at the irritating painting.  
Diefenbaker’s cold nose nudged his hand, and Turnbull smiled. He picked up a paintbrush and resigned himself to sentimentality with a wry smile. He began the careful strokes, adding in what he assumed would be the first of four wolves.


End file.
